Yep, the funny part is many said this at the time, but the ADF denounced this simple fact. However, they now say the 680 was midrange. It's really hard to get the facts right around here because so many manipulate the truth for silly purposes.
Firstly, there was major negative feedback regarding early launch prices for the entire HD7000 stack on this very forum, even before GTX670/680 showed up. Secondly, after 670/680 showed up, again on this very forum, there was a massive backlash and many months of discussions about how NV doubled the prices of cards by pricing mid-range products at flagship pricing levels. Many guys who bought NV criticized 680 for delivering the worst "flagship" generation increase ever (over the 580), hence its $499 pricing wasn't justified even in their own eyes. But, most of the market complained and still purchased $350-550 7950/7970/670/680 cards. That sets off a new precedent for AMD/NV. Thirdly, this
new strategy was repeated with Maxwell with NV pushing the price of 560Ti's successor from $499 of 680 to $549 for the 980. The term 'bi-furcating' a generation became a common way to describe this new way to release next gen products. The majority of 'ADF' as you put it called it as it was. The difference was that many of those same gamers also mined with AMD cards, which meant the $550 price on 7970 and $550 on 290X weren't a deterrent as those cards were essentially paid off via crypto-currency. That doesn't mean many on here didn't criticize the direction the entire GPU industry was heading, as early as 1-2Q 2012.
Whatever, I am not sweating it. As long as crypto-currency continues into its 8th year, I'll be well on my way to free Vegas. If NV wants to milk its customer base with $500 1070 and $650 1080 (mid-range parts), that's their right. At the end of the day, NV and AMD are going to price what the market can bear and if people want to pay $500-650 for mid-range products, well...congrats AMD/NV! Sooner or later crypto-currency won't sustain free GPU upgrades and then it won't be fun anymore paying $550 for mid-range next gen parts.
How about 980Ti + 20% at 150W?
$649 would slot right in. Incremental improvements with a major power efficiency gains. Hello Intel's playbook!
The full GP104 with GDDR5X, 1080Ti, $899?? ~Titan X + 30%?
After-market $420 670 beat 580 by 30% at 1600p.
So when 1080 beats 980Ti by the same 20-30%, it should cost $600-650 because.....inflation and Huang's next gen Ferrari/Tesla stable replacements.
God, $650 for the midrange chip? If that happens I'm definitely waiting for Vega.
Ok, and if 1080 is $550-650 and Vega 10/11 is even faster, what makes you think AMD won't price it for
at least $650? AMD was perfectly content pricing the Nano for $649 and Fury X for $649 despite after-market 980Ti cards demolishing them by 25-30% once fully overclocked! Ouch. The old management of AMD would have never priced a card which is definitively slower and has less VRAM to go head on against the 980Ti. That's just market share suicide. With new AMD, it's now way too hard to predict but I think Fiji pricing and AMD raising market prices on 290/290X with 390/390X replacements is a good indication that AMD is no longer interested in $369-379 5870/6970 style pricing strategies for their larger die product lines.
Is this guy at chiphell any kind of reasonable source?
Could also be a strategic leak by NV to scare the market with $499 1070 and $649 1080 prices to release them later at $429 and $599 and suddenly they are much cheaper than expected.
At one point they got to 82 - 18 marketshare. So in effect, it's a monopoly.
NV figures they have the mindshare, lots of gamers won't touch AMD regardless so they can price it at whatever the want. Right?
You hit the nail on the head there. With declining volume unit sales of CPUs and discrete GPUs, the best way to continue with revenue and profit growth is to increase gross margins by lowering costs (smaller die sizes), while raising prices (higher ASPs). Bifurcating a generation, doing fancy renaming by calling x60 series cards x70/80, VRAM gimping, releasing various cut-down flagships until finally releasing a fully unlocked flagship -- all of this isn't a coincidence. We should be lucky we enjoyed many years of $200-250 next gen cards.
Starting in 2012, mid-range became high-end and high-end became Enthusiast.
As long as NV's loyal user-base keeps buying, there is no reason to stop raising prices esp. since AMD is MIA with Vega 10/11 and Fury X cannot even beat an after-market 980Ti, so....